News - Microsoft announces Surface for Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro

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Finally an attempt to step into the market that has made Apple so popular?

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Read more.

This genuinely looks awesome, If it's not too expensive and is good when reviewed I may get one.

Actually looks like it does deliver a business capable tablet,
and they've taken notice of the limiting features of ipads.


Keyboard as standard - tick
Case as standard - tick
Stand included as standard - tick

and USB...

Including Office is also a huge win.


A 3 month wait until we can order though ?

I'm actually rather impressed. I'm just waiting to see what they do the ruin it.

I like the look of this.

There are a few things that will determine if I buy one: price; cloud-based backups and software downloads; the quality of that keyboard; price (did I say price?).

Good to see ARM mixing it up with Intel; I appreciate the opportunity to buy British.

Does anyone understand the significance of the magnesium body? What does that offer? Tensile strength and weight?
I remember magnesium going up like a firework in chemistry class, let's hope the battery doesn't get too hot.

Shut up and take my money!

It looks stunning. However as Steve said - eventually they'll ruin it. How exactly is the surface brand going to work?

I'd like to buy a surface." - "Granite or wood?"

This is much better than an ereader competitor :D

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Originally Posted by cameronlite

It looks stunning. However as Steve said - eventually they'll ruin it. How exactly is the surface brand going to work?

I'd like to buy a surface." - "Granite or wood?"

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Thats my big worry. Microsoft have had a far greater list of failures recently than successes (Kin, Zune vs Xbox). I'm actually quite impressed despite being very negative about Win8 however I still think they have a big sell against the ipad. Price and word of mouth will be what wins/sinks this... (Personally if its more expensive than an Asus transformer with android i'd rather have the Asus as I have a lot of Android apps now and don't want to repurchase).

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Originally Posted by Boris

Does anyone understand the significance of the magnesium body? What does that offer? Tensile strength and weight?

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Magnesium alloy is just an alternative to aluminium:

20x stronger then ABS plastic
50% lighter than steel
33% lighter than aluminium.

Plenty of laptops have been made out of it in the past.

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Originally Posted by mikerr

Magnesium alloy is just an alternative to aluminium:

20x stronger then ABS plastic
50% lighter than steel
33% lighter than aluminium.

Plenty of laptops have been made out of it in the past.

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Thanks. I didn't know that it had been used in laptops before.

Does indeed look both nice and useful. I too wondered about the mix of magnesium and lithium :)

My laptop is magnesium. Sometimes it doesn't go into standby, I put it in my bag and then it gets so hot that the battery disconnects itself.

I still have all my skin and hair.

I've got a (now ancient) magnesium allow laptop as well - it's fantastic, light, cool, rigid. Luckily standby does work.. shame the battery is past it and one of the fan bearings has gone :p

I think it looks absolutely excellent and I am all for another ipad competitor to drive the market.

However what I need now is a price and date. I really want the ivy bridge one but I have a feeling they will price this against lower range ultrabooks. Possibly £499 for the RT and £699 for the tablet. These are the prices me thinks. Any less they are a steal, any more and they are sunk.

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Originally Posted by cheesemp

Thats my big worry. Microsoft have had a far greater list of failures recently than successes (Kin, Zune vs Xbox). I'm actually quite impressed despite being very negative about Win8 however I still think they have a big sell against the ipad. Price and word of mouth will be what wins/sinks this... (Personally if its more expensive than an Asus transformer with android I'd rather have the Asus as I have a lot of Android apps now and don't want to repurchase).

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I'd actually disagree - in recent years MS have been far more successful with much better thought out products of much better quality. Kin was some time back, and Zune was arguably a good product (and a forerunner for better things to come) but wasn't really pushed hard by the company (and retrospectively that was sensible given the PMP market is all but dead). OTOH Win7 and 360 are very successful (and great products). WP7? Too early to tell - it faces a huge uphill battle but then this is possible where Win8 (and 360/720) come into play as MS are forging a 'one UI' strategy with Metro. I'm slowly warming to this, and it might work out for them if people can pick up a tablet, PC, console and phone that all share the same UI. Now, i'm in no way saying they've got everything right yet but I think MS might be playing a much longer term game here and in some of these markets it will take anyone a huge amount of time and effort to make any serious penetration but then MS are already huge in some markets (PCs, consoles) so leveraging this into markets where they're not (tablets, phones) makes a lot of sense.

On the face of it this is a very polished launch - the hardware and software look great. I'm interested to try it.

Speaking as someone using Win8 full time at work, Win7 at home (but with Win8 on my ULV lappy), an iPad 3 and a Galaxy Nexus..